


The Universe Can Wait For Ice Cream and Pancakes

by RoseByAnyOtherName (badxwolfxrising)



Series: Nothing Gold Can Stay [4]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 22:04:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3504395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badxwolfxrising/pseuds/RoseByAnyOtherName
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor shows up with a new suit and a bad mood.  They go to Amsterdam to cheer him up.  Hijinks ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Universe Can Wait For Ice Cream and Pancakes

“What the hell are you doing?” River’s shocked voice asked from the doorway.

Startled, the Doctor dropped the bow tie he was holding in his hand. He bent over to fetch it, and turned to look at her. “Sorry? I just got back from shopping. Bought a new suit. Thought it might be time to mix-it up a bit. I have all this wardrobe space, might as well put it to use. I mean, I suppose it wouldn’t kill me to wear more than two different suits on a regular basis. I know you love shopping, but when I tried to wake you to see if you wanted to go, you just shouted at me that you didn’t want any tea. I didn’t press the issue, not after you nearly punched me in the throat.”

“Sorry. I’m a bit of a violent waker. Old habits die hard, I guess,” she said softly. He gave her a funny look, but turned back to the mirror and resumed knotting his tie. She watched him do it, and swallowed heavily.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, as his long fingers struggled to shape the bow. After watching him do this for a moment, she went over and grabbed his wrists, stopping him. He dropped his hands to his sides and gave her another funny look, but said nothing as she adjusted the tie for him. Her fingers quickly pulled apart his clumsy, inelegant knot and redid it so that it was smooth. She pulled both loops with her fingers and easily shaped the bow symmetrically. Finished, she stepped back and appraised him.

“You seem like you’ve had a lot of practice doing that,” he volunteered conversationally.

“I have,” she agreed, swallowing again.

“River...what is the matter with you? If this is about Rose again, I wish you’d let it go. Whatever hang ups I have about her, I’m really trying to be present here with you.”

She cut him off. “No, it’s not that. Nothing is the matter.”

“The hell it isn’t,” he grumbled, adjusting his cuffs. “You’ve got your back to the mirror, so you can’t see the look you’re giving me right now, but I assure you, it doesn’t say that nothing is wrong.”

“Why’d you pick out that suit? Why now?” she asked finally, after a moment’s silence.

“What does that have to do with the price of eggs on Raxacoricofallapatorius?” he asked, obviously starting to become irritated with her obfuscation. Seeing the expression on her face, he thought better of it. “I don’t know. Because it was completely different, that’s why. Bow tie instead of a regular tie. Tweed instead of pinstripes. Looser trousers than I’d normally wear, so I needed braces. And something about it didn’t seem right with my trainers, so I put on boots.”

“But why?” she asked again, her voice breaking a little as she did.  
“Because...because I’m trying to do things differently with you. Be different. I’m trying to give this, to give us, an honest chance. New leaf, new suit. I mean, it had to be a new suit, I couldn’t very well cut my hair,” he said, running his hand through it as he did. “I don’t know. I still don’t know what my future holds...how long I’ll have with you. You don’t like it, do you?”

“No. No, I like it fine. It’s a nice suit, brilliant. It’s just...” her breath hitched a little, but she forced herself to smile. “You look like someone else in it, that’s all. You don’t look like you. I don’t want you to be someone else, there’s no need to change who you are. I just want you to be yourself, Doctor.”

There was still something he was missing, he knew that, but he was damned if he knew how to read her any better than the completely human female companions he’d had, and she was at least part Time Lord. Somehow. That was another thing he still hadn’t figured out, and she wasn’t exactly volunteering the information. Whatever it was, it had to be Emperor of Spoiler Island territory. He didn’t figure he was ever likely to find out, at least not this regeneration.

“Alright then, I’ll change and take you for breakfast. How about Amsterdam? They have the loveliest pancakes there, nothing like those starchy abominations they serve in American diners. And if you behave, I might even be persuaded to visit a coffee shop and sex museum with you,” he said coyly, hanging up the suit jacket. 

Very little coffee was actually served in the Netherlands’ coffee shops, although you could usually buy ‘special’ tea. He very rarely, if ever, partook in those sorts of things. Not because he frowned on drugs-marijuana was just a harmless medicinal herb, so far as he was concerned. No, he avoided it because it had a similar effect on Time Lords as it did to humans, one of the rare few that did. Maybe because it was natural and not synthesized, like the Moods of New New York. But it made him ridiculously insatiable, in more than one way. He wondered if River knew this or not.

“Coffee shop and a sex museum? Alright, now I know there’s something wrong with YOU. Where’s the Doctor and what have you done with him?” she teased, unknotting his tie for him.

“Well, if you’d rather we could just stay in, eat stale biscuits and have old tea in the TARDIS.”

“Don’t you dare!” she laughed, smacking him playfully on the chest. He caught her wrist in his hand and pulled her close, hugging her against him. He buried his face in her hair, and inhaled deeply. She smelled _so_ good. And so very different than Rose. Rose had been all fresh and dewy, honeysuckle and pink sugar and orange blossoms and soft, youthful skin. Sweet enough to eat, and he blushed a little thinking about it. But River smelled more woman than girl, more spicy than sweet. Maybe it was because she’d been an archaeologist, but to him she smelled like exotic spices in a foreign market, bourbon and vanilla, leather and incense smoke, blue lotus and the crisp balsam-like scent of papyrus. It kind of reminded him of Cleo. Blue lotus and papyrus were sacred to the Egyptians. He loved the way she smelled, though. It was complex and mysterious, much like herself to him.

“What are you doing?” she finally asked, after several minutes of him holding her like this.

“I’m memorizing you, the way you smell. Scent and memory, all that good stuff. You smell lovely, like papyrus and lotus.”

“You’ve got a good nose. It’s my shampoo, some fancy stuff I found at the last bazaar we stopped off at. Glad you like it. I know the Egyptians believed the combination was sacred, that it was the beginning of life itself. And a fertility symbol, of course,” she said.

He pulled back and raised his eyebrows at her. He did know this, but hadn’t felt a need to mention it. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

“No, certainly not,” she said hastily. “I don’t even know that we’re genetically compatible.”

“Why wouldn’t we be? We’re both humanoid, both have Time Lord genes,” the Doctor said. She wasn’t sure how to read his expression, as it was one she’d never seen in either of his forms. Vexed was the best way she could think to describe that look, but even that didn’t quite cover it. His eyes suggested this unsaid proposition was slightly amusing to him, but she couldn’t see how, not as torn up as he was over the loss of his children. Then again, Time Lords were not entertained by the same sorts of things humans were, not really. The Doctor was just strange, by human and Time Lord standards. She had to be misreading him.

“Okay? So what are you saying?” she asked.

“Nothing, you were the one saying it. That you don’t even know if we’re genetically compatible. We could find out, if you’d like.”

She stared at him, thunderstruck. “What?”

He realized the error in his explanation. “Oh. OH! No, no, no, no. Not like that. I didn’t mean it like that! Gods, no. I just meant there are tests we could run, to see if we’re genetically compatible. What did you think I meant?”

“Well, at first it kind of sounded like you wanted to see if you could get me pregnant. I admit, you lost me a little bit after that point.”

He was blushing furiously now. “Sorry, sorry. No, that wasn’t what I meant. Why...is that what you want?”

She stared back at him, but didn’t answer for a long, measured moment. “I don’t expect it matters if that’s what I want. Is that even possible? I’d think dying and coming back...that had to have rendered me infertile anyway. Besides...I think that would definitely fall under the category of ‘meddling’ with our time lines, which we both agreed would not be wise. Nothing that could irrevocably change the course of our histories.”

He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Well, I don’t know. You and your eggs were in cold storage. Although I don’t know what effect the data transfer that killed you would’ve had...and I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation.”

“Yeah, me either,” she said.

“You’re right though, that sort of thing would probably be a bad idea. Although I have no idea what the future is like. Never thought I’d marry again, but evidently I changed my mind about that my next regeneration. If I could change my mind about that, I suppose I could change my mind about children, or anything else, for that matter. You’d know better than me, I suppose,” he said, a trace of bitterness in his voice. He was standing in just an undershirt and pants now, staring into the wardrobe to avoid looking at her.

“Maybe we should stay in after all,” she suggested, as much for herself as him. Seeing him dressed up like that...she didn’t even know exactly she felt. He looked sharp, and even handsome in everything he wore, but it hurt too much seeing him in the vestiges of the Doctor that she had fallen in love with.

“Do what you like,” he said, shrugging his arms into his blue jacket. He shimmied his trousers up over his hips, and pulled his Converse out of the pile where he’d kicked them. “I’m going out.”

“You’re angry at me,” she stated. He looked at her, but said nothing. “You are. I don’t know why, but I can tell. So until you tell me why, you aren’t going anywhere.”

He snorted, and pulled his glasses out of his pocket. “Right. You’re going to hold me hostage on my own TARDIS?”

“Maybe,” she said, pulling handcuffs from seemingly nowhere. “If I have to. But in fairness, when you thought I was cross with you, you kind of cornered me and made me tell you why.”

He stood up straight and looked at her. He seemed to be mulling what she’d said over. “River...how do I know that you aren’t manipulating me? Not that I expect you are...I don’t. But how do I know that what’s been happening here between you and me is actually an accident? Maybe this is how it always played out. Maybe _you_ are why I regenerate.”

She stared at him. Every day, he surprised her. Sometimes, he was amazingly tender. Other times, he was cavalier and cruel. But he could run hot and cold from one moment to the next, and she wasn’t sure how to react.

“I can’t tell you why or how or even when you regenerate. But I can tell you that it wasn’t because of me, that it was a choice you made in saving someone else. That’s you, forever, always thinking about other people first. When you regenerate, you are alone. I’m sorry,” she said, wondering if she’d made a mistake in telling him as much as she had. Her stomach was still doing flips. The tone of this conversation had shifted so quickly, it left her feeling slightly dazed.

He nodded, bit his lip, and turned his head. His shoulders started to shake. He was crying. Hesitantly, she came from behind him and slipped an arm around him. “I don’t want to go,” he whimpered.

“I know,” she said soothingly. She stood like that awkwardly for a few minutes before he finally wrapped her in his arms in a proper hug.

“I’m a mess,” he mumbled into her hair.

“I know,” she replied again. “But you’re my mess, and I’ll clean you up. Maybe pancakes in the Netherlands is just what you need after all. They have the most amazing ice cream too, though. I know you love ice cream,” she said in a singsong, almost as though she were talking to a child. In a way though he was like an overgrown intergalactic space toddler, stumbling through the planets like they were his own personal tinker toys.

“I do love ice cream,” he agreed with a sigh. He pulled back from her, dried his eyes, and planted a gentle kiss on her forehead. “You’re so kind to me, even when I’m such a chav to you. I don’t deserve it.”

She just smiled sadly. “I just know you very well. And you do deserve it. You’ve lost so much, Doctor.”

“River...how much time do I have left?” he asked bluntly.

She looked at him. ‘You know I can’t.”

“You can. Please. You don’t have to be exact...I just want an idea. So I can try to prepare for it. Make myself ready. Do the things I want to do in this body before I have to go.”

“Doctor, you know why I can’t. It’s your own rule,” she gently chided.

“Well if I’m the one who made the rule, then surely I can be the one to ask you to break it, too,” he replied darkly. Now she was starting to get a little uncomfortable. He was standing very close to her, holding her wrist in one hand. The same wrist he’d given up years of his life to fix once, though of course he didn’t know it yet. His eyes had that wild look they sometimes got, though. It was a look she had come to know and knew that bad, impulsive decisions often followed it.

“Please...I can’t. You promised me you wouldn’t do this,” she reminded him. He was so much more...intense in this regeneration. Her Doctor was not so inclined to argue with her, or press the issue. If her Doctor was a pussy cat, than this Doctor was a tiger.

The fire went out of his eyes then and he dropped her wrist hastily. Without a word he turned and left the wardrobe room, left her standing there staring after him, as she often found herself doing these days. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until it came rushing out of her in one long, shuddering sigh. She let her gaze fall on his new suit, hanging where he’d left it. She ran her fingers over the material, held it pressed against her face and breathed in, imagining the ghost of a scent that wasn’t there. All she could smell was him, which was good, but different. It smelled like the Doctor, but not _her_ Doctor.

She let a few big, wet tears slip down her cheek before she used the sleeve of one of his hanging shirts to dab at her eyes. He couldn’t seem to make up his mind if he wanted to fight her or fuck her or what. He was a complete psychopath, and that was saying something, coming from her. The crazy thing was that she kept letting him do it to her. Dying and coming back must have changed her, because the old River Song wouldn’t have put up with it. But if she didn’t go with him, what else would she do? She was already supposed to be dead, and the idea of facing whatever life she might have left without the Doctor in it at all made her feel infinitely sad. She’d rather the wrong Doctor than no Doctor at all.

She tried to look for him, but the TARDIS was big enough that if he didn’t want to be found he could hide for eternity. She checked the library, the pool, his lab and his bedroom, and found no sign of him. There was no sign he’d attempted tea in any of the kitchens, either. She wandered aimlessly, having no other purpose at that moment. She couldn’t see him, but she could feel his sadness emanating through the great ship.

She wandered past many other bedrooms. She saw bunk beds in one, and smiled, recognizing it as the room that would one day belong to her parents. She didn’t linger there too long. Best not to, considering what other things had gone on in that room...

When she finally found him, he was sitting in one of the bedrooms in total darkness. She hesitated before entering, wondering what she was walking into. She had her ideas about where she might be. She came to sit beside him on the bed, but said nothing. In the darkness, he reached out and took her hand but remained silent. They sat like that for a while before he finally spoke.

“This was her room.”

She nodded in the dark. “I had a feeling.”

“No. Not Rose’s. Susan...my granddaughter. It’s been in storage for a long, long time. I was walking, and then there it was. I haven’t been in this room for more than seven hundred years, and it still smells like her. Her mother used to smell the same, when she was a child.”

“Oh,” was all she could think to say. He almost never spoke about his family to her. Of all the many conversations they had had over the years, of all his secrets, she still knew next to nothing about the one’s who had been his family when Gallifrey had still sat high in the cosmos.

“Whatever you think you know about me...whatever you think I have lost, or whatever you think I deserve...just remember this: I killed her. I killed them all. Same as I killed you in the Library, same as I nearly killed Donna, same as I would’ve killed Rose if Pete hadn’t rescued her at the last minute. I save the universe, time and time again...but at what cost? I lose everything close to me, everyone that loves me. So why even bother? What’s the point of carrying on like this?”

“Doctor, you can’t think that way. You did what you had to do to protect the integrity of Time itself. That’s bigger than family, bigger than conventional rights and wrongs. Besides...you haven’t lost everyone that loves you. I’m still here,” she said, squeezing his hand.

“You don’t love me though, not really. You love the idea of me, the Doctor. You love _him_ , the future me. When we were in the wardrobe room, I could feel it. When I was wearing that suit. I couldn’t see his face, but I kept getting the strong impression that you were thinking of someone else. Except you weren’t, because you were also thinking how terribly you missed the Doctor. And before you accuse me of reading your mind, I wasn’t trying to, not intentionally. It was all you, just coming off of you.”

“Why didn’t you say something then, back there? If you knew what I was thinking, why didn’t you say it?” she asked, at a loss for anything else to say. No matter what, he did know exactly what she was thinking, whether he had peeked or not. It was unfair, and a bit eerie.

“Because we’re all guilty of it. And because, like I said...you’ve been so kind to me, even when I’ve been rude and cold to you. I’m not good with domestics. Never imagined I’d get married again. But this doesn’t feel like we’re married, does it?” he asked, though she got the feeling he wasn’t necessarily asking her specifically.

“No, it doesn’t feel like being married. If feels a lot more like being friend-with-benefits. But...I can be okay with that, if you can. Our relationship has always been complicated, no sense in trying to make it conform to shape now. But Doctor...what you said isn’t entirely true. I want to love you, _this_ you. I really do. But you won’t let me, you understand? When you keep doing things like this, keep putting me at arm’s length and sniping at me to avoid getting closer. That’s not helping. You’re downright cruel to me sometimes, for seemingly no reason at all. That’s not you.”

“No, it’s not,” he agreed from beside her. “That hasn’t been me for a while. I don’t feel like me, though. I don’t know what I feel like. I don’t think even I know who the Doctor is anymore,” he said, despair creeping into his voice. Her heart ached for him. He was still so incredibly tortured.

“Well...you still have time to figure that out. That’s the beauty of being a time traveller. The future waits for no man, except the Doctor. Let it wait a little while longer,” she said, rocking him gently in the darkness. “At any rate, it can wait long enough for ice cream and pancakes, right?”

“I suppose,” he sniffled. “Though not necessarily in that order.”

River laughed and stood, tugging the Doctor to his feet. “Now _that_ sounds more like the you I know. Come on, enough melancholy for today. I believe there was mention of visiting a coffee shop? From what I hear, they sell a whole lot else besides hot beverages.”

* * * * *

River watched as the Doctor polished off his third cone of Blauer Engel. He had let her taste it, and it had a very sweet, bubblegum kind of flavor to it. She suspected he liked it so much mainly because it was blue.

“I don’t know where you put it all. And you’re still so thin. It’s quite unfair,” she grumbled good naturedly. “I was full after pancakes.”

“It was your idea to go to the coffee shop _before_ we got food,” he replied, licking his fingers. “Rassilon, that stuff is the best. I wish I could get a couple gallons to take back to the TARDIS.”

“Well next time you get a craving, we’ll just have to come back,” she said.

“Is my tongue blue?” he asked, sticking it out at her. Naturally, she couldn’t help but think of what other things that tongue was good for, besides eating ice cream. And they hadn’t even hit the sex museum yet.

“No,” she lied, smiling at him. He grinned back at her sunnily, and she felt a surge of love for him. He was so different from her Doctor, but that was part of what made him appealing. Because even if he was different, he was still so much the same. He really delighted in the simplest of things.

“Alright, good. So...sex museum?” he asked, quirking his eyebrows at her.

“Are you sure you want to do that on a full stomach?” she replied.

“Oh, right. Because I’ve travelled all of time and space and the thing that might make me lose my lunch is a silly little sex museum? On 21st century Earth, a planet that’s rather prudish compared to the rest of the universe? Not likely. I travelled with Captain Jack, remember? I doubt anything in that museum has the power to shock me.”

“I guess we’ll see about that,” she chuckled.

“Care to make a wager, Professor Song?” he asked, smiling mischievously.

“What sort of wager?” she responded, batting her eyelashes at him.

“I bet,” he whispered, his breath warm on her ear. “That you can’t make it through the sex museum without getting so turned on you have to drag me into the loo to shag.”

“Oh?” she said, raising her eyebrows at him. “And if I win this wager?”

“Name your terms.”

“Actually,” she said thoughtfully. “That’s a bet I might not mind losing. But what do you get if you win?”

“Well, I get to shag you in the loo. Obviously,” he replied helpfully.

* * * * *

“There are a lot more statues of giant erect penises than I was expecting,” the Doctor stated matter of factually. “Still...better than psychopath killers disguised as statues.”

“It’s a sex museum,” River said pointedly. “What were you expecting?”

He ignored the question. “Titanic Tina Small, the woman with an 84 inch bust. Nothing small about her from the looks of it. Blimey, how does she stand up without pitching right over?” he said, adjusting his glasses.

“I don’t know,” River replied, looking at a statue of a woman reclined and masturbating. The Doctor came to stand beside her and slipped his arm around her waist.

“Imagine having that as a conversation piece in your living room,” he remarked idly as they moved on to the next display, another statue, this one of a male flasher, pants downs, holding his coat open. There was a giant sculpted bronze bowl made out of a ring of erect penises. There were cartoons and comics of naked women with enormous breasts, pictures and statues of people engaged in various sexual positions, a sculpture of an arse and two legs with giant, flirty eyes. They strolled past a large display of mannequins decked out in black leather S&M gear, holding whips and chains.

“Just an average Saturday night, right?” the Doctor quipped, gesturing at two mannequins, one bent over, the other holding a paddle.

“Alright, I get the point,” River said, tugging him across the room and back towards the entrance, where the loo was located.

As it turned out, she didn’t mind losing their bet at all.


End file.
